


Frozen Surf

by quantumvelvet



Category: Arkham Horror (Board Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumvelvet/pseuds/quantumvelvet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freedom can come at a terrible cost.  A bid to free Arkham of the horrors afflicting it does not go according to plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frozen Surf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Malkontent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malkontent/gifts).



The wind whipped over the bleak grey-white plain, stirring up shards of ice like tiny slivers of frozen glass. They sliced across Amanda's cheeks, and shuddering beneath the oppressive weight of the alien world, she could well imagine that they were the wind's teeth, tasting her blood and carrying it back to some vast, dark thing at its source. Behind her, something howled, the timbre only just different enough from the wind's wail to differentiate it. Even then, she might have dismissed it, but glimpses caught out of the corner of her eye, always along the distant horizon, left her sure that something was following her. Had been following her from the moment she'd stepped foot inside this accursed place.

 

“ _Ithaqua, Walker of the Frozen Wastes.” Daisy pronounced the name with the stilted uncertainty of one who had only ever experienced them read, never spoken. “Probably the source of the Wendigo myth. His followers are cannibals to a one. It – fits with the string of disappearances. And with the weather.”_

 

“ _Snow in July,” Kate agreed, grim. “It would make sense, if the creatures bleeding through are from somewhere cold. Do your books have anything on his territory? We can't close the rifts if we don't know anything about the places they lead to.”_

 

They hadn't had enough; those who had ventured into other worlds and returned were few and far between. Those who had returned sane enough to pass on any of what they'd learned were even fewer. With the pulse of the surf beating in her head, Amanda had understood the latter. Now, the only thing about the former that amazed her was the fact that anyone had managed to return at all.

 

“ _The only way out is through. We don't know why, no one does, but you can't return the same way you entered. You'll have to get to another gate on the other side.”_

 

“ _So what's to stop me from stepping back out in Switzerland? Or under the ocean?” Amanda asked, suppressing a shudder at the distant thrill that stirred in the back of her head at the possibility of the latter._

 

“ _There are only a limited number of gates on our side. There's a good chance you'll come back exactly where you started.”_

 

“ _How can you be sure?”_

 

“ _Easy,” Kate broke in, with a tense smile that didn't reach her haunted eyes. Hadn't reached them for weeks, now. “Our world hasn't ripped apart at the seams yet.”_

 

“ _Just find a path and stick to it,” Daisy warned. “It will be all too easy to get lost out there. Don't veer off course for anything.”_

 

The howling sounded again, closer this time. In the distance, eyes gleamed, too many and too alien to be anything that even resembled an earthly creature. If she kept on her current course, Amanda realized, it would intercept her within hours, and she was still at least a day out from the crossing point.

 

“ _Don't veer off course for anything.”_

 

Offering a silent apology to the urgent spectre of her friend whispering at the back of her mind, Amanda broke into a run, heading off at an angle to the icy path. She was fairly certain she'd be able to find it again, once she'd taken shelter to wait out the hunting creature. It was worth the gamble. If she kept on-course, she'd be ripped apart, and never return home at all.

 

-

 

It had been three days since she'd last seen the path, three days since she'd heard the howling. Both had vanished while she'd waited, dozing fitfully, sucked under by dreams of crashing waves and cracking icebergs. It would take a miracle to get her out of this place, and she had the sneaking suspicion she'd already used up her meager allotment of miracles. The last one had been finding Kate.

 

 _Amanda had the niggling suspicion that she'd seen the woman by the bookshelves before. Slim, with short dark hair cut in a neat bob; she could have been any one of a half-dozen researchers at Miskatonic University. Nothing about her stood out – except for the book she was leafing through, forehead creased in concentration that looked to be veering into frustration._ Unaussprechlichen Kulten. _There weren't many reasons for anyone to be looking at the dusty old tome._

 

 _Her stomach twisted in a painful synergy of hope and panic._

 

They hadn't trusted one another at first, not fully. How could they? The secrets had driven so many mad over the years; some had harmed only themselves, and others had turned to the servitude of the dark things from beyond, despairing at ever stopping them, or wishing to grasp some small scrap of favour and power to cling to as the world burned, or drowned, or froze. Weeks of careful circling had broken, finally, when whispers of strange creeping shadows and disappearances amongst the lost and forgotten had surfaced finally outside of the small, loose collection of people who had themselves, at one point or another, had some encounter that had shredded any blinders they might have wished to cling to. Their discussions, infrequent and held by unspoken consensus in well-lit, closed rooms, or in the comforting sterility of Kate's laboratory, had turned from theoretical to real, from maybes into have-seens, have-dones.

 

It had been a week more before Kate had dared to speak of her plan, and Amanda had felt that same painful, stomach-twisting hope.

 

“ _The resonance can only block anything from entering now. But if it can block them, it should be able to drive them back – I just need to get it properly attuned.”_

 

“ _How long would that take?” Amanda winced at the hope that leached into her voice. The ocean's call had only been getting stronger, and three nights running now, she'd awoken to find herself standing at the window, hand already on the latch._

 

 _Kate shook her head, apology writ clear in her dark eyes. “It's taken me nearly four years to get this far. I don't know enough about the other side of the rifts – as it is, it might take decades, if I can do it at all. But if I had samples from the other side...”_

 

“ _You need someone to go in.”_

 

“ _And I can't ask anyone to do that. It's far too dangerous.”_

 

 _Amanda rubbed a hand over the side of her neck, shuddering at the sense-memory of fluttering gills. “I'll go.”_

 

The wind picked up, howling down laughter as it raked a torrent of razored, icy shards against her cheek.

 

“ _I'll go. At least if I die there, I'll die human.”_

 

-

 

It had been two days since Amanda had heard the ocean. Even the throb of her blood, rendered sluggish by the unrelenting cold, had ceased to carry the sound of the surf. The icy plateau was freezing it out, turning it solid, leaving the thing that whispered in the dark corners of her soul nothing to yearn for. She thought, perhaps, that the yearning thing had already passed, and the dull thrill of joy warmed her briefly, enough that the next breath to pass through her lips fogged the air, before freezing to nothing.

 

She had prayed so long that she might be rid of it; now, with the cold turning her marrow into frosted glass, she realized that she had long since accepted the fact that she would only truly manage that blissful state in death.

 

In the distance, another howling voice joined the wind's chorus. She tried to shift, but her limbs felt encased in ice, frozen to the dead grey ground. Perhaps they were; she couldn't quite muster the energy to pry her eyes open and look for herself.

 

“ _If I'm not back in a week, find someone else. We've put together a little money. Maybe that will prompt someone to help, if survival won't.”_

 

“ _You're coming back.” Kate was fierce so rarely that Amanda physically startled at the vehemence of the statement._

 

“ _If I don't, find someone else. Please, promise me.”_

 

 _Kate held her gaze for a long moment, then looked away. “I promise. But you'd better not make me keep it.”_

 

“ _Just keep the light on for me.” Amanda stepped through the swirling rift, glancing back only once over her shoulder. The fierce determination on her friend's face before a blast of icy wind swallowed that last glimpse of her was only matched by the despair._

 

The howls sounded closer now, each crest mapping to the slowing, sluggish beat of Amanda's heart. Claws, cruel and terrible, cracked the skin of ice along the ground with a sound like shattering glass. Breath stirred against the back of her neck, colder even than the bitter, maddened wind.

 

She didn't feel pain as the beast's wicked teeth sliced through her, only pressure, and cold, and finally release.

 

Her last thought before the darkness claimed her was of the sea.


End file.
